Walk out of Trump International's porte-cochère on Fashion Show Drive and you're handed a choice before you've taken ten steps. Turn left and you're at the mall's north entrance in under a minute. Turn right and a few blocks up Las Vegas Boulevard puts you inside Wynn Plaza. Both directions changed this year, but they changed in opposite ways, and that contrast says more about how this stretch of the Strip actually works than either change does on its own.
The anchor that's on its way out
Fashion Show has anchored this corner of the Strip since 1981, and for most of that run its five department stores felt permanent: Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, Nordstrom, Macy's, and Dillard's. That changed on March 6, 2026, when Saks Global announced it was closing 12 Saks Fifth Avenue and 3 Neiman Marcus locations nationwide to cut costs, and the Fashion Show store was named on that list. No closure date has been made public for the Las Vegas location specifically, and the other four anchors weren't named in the announcement. But for a mall that has spent four decades leaning on its anchor lineup as the reason to cross the street, having one of them on a corporate closure list is not a small thing.
Four storefronts that opened anyway
What's notable is that the mall kept signing new tenants through the same stretch of 2026 that produced the Saks news. None of them are department-store scale. All of them are the kind of single-category, specialty-format shop that's replaced the big-box model everywhere from strip malls to Strip malls.
| Storefront | What it is | Where in the mall |
|---|---|---|
| Garage | Women's clothing | Level 1, near Macy's |
| Gorjana | Jewelry | Level 1, across from MAC |
| Hat Club | Headwear, team and collector pieces | Level 2, near Olight |
| Blue Bottle Coffee | Coffee, its second Las Vegas location | Level 1, near MAC Cosmetics |
Garage and Gorjana are already open, and Hat Club and Blue Bottle were both confirmed for early 2026, meaning all four should be running by the time you read this. TaVida Rice, the mall's senior general manager, said she was "thrilled to welcome these exciting new brands" when the openings were announced. That's standard press-release language, but the pattern underneath it is real: while the mall's biggest name faces an uncertain future, the leasing office is still actively filling smaller footprints with single-purpose concepts rather than waiting to see what happens to the anchor space.
A few minutes north, one very big dinner
Head the other direction and the story flips. Instead of several small additions, Wynn Plaza landed one large one. Sartiano's Italian Steakhouse opened March 4, 2026, in a room that looks out over the greens of Wynn Golf Club's 18th hole with a sightline to the Sphere. Chef Alfred Portale, a three-time James Beard Award winner and the culinary director behind the original Sartiano's in New York, put it plainly in a Las Vegas Review-Journal feature on the opening: "How many restaurants in Vegas can boast that they overlook the Sphere and the 18th hole?" A branch of Zero Bond, the New York private members club, opened next door as part of the same project.
Sartiano's didn't arrive in an empty room. It joined a Wynn Plaza dining lineup that already includes:
- Cipriani, the Venice import known for carpaccio alla Cipriani and tableside Bellinis
- Delilah, the retro supper club with live entertainment
- SW Steakhouse, a longtime draw for the Wynn's steak crowd
- Mizumi, Wynn's Japanese room, following a recent renovation
- Casa Playa, the coastal Mexican restaurant from chef Sarah Thompson, who won the 2026 James Beard Award for Best Chef Southwest
Five months after opening, Sartiano's has settled into that lineup as the newest marquee reservation in a corridor that was already dense with them.
Two different kinds of new
Put those two directions side by side and the pattern is hard to miss. South and west, at Fashion Show, 2026 brought four small, specific additions layered on top of uncertainty about the mall's most recognizable name. North, at Wynn Plaza, 2026 brought one large, specific addition to a dining row that didn't need help getting attention. Neither direction is shrinking. They're just adding differently, one in small specialty units and one in a single high-profile swing.
For anyone who actually lives on this block, that distinction is practical. A coffee run or a quick clothing errand still means crossing the street to Fashion Show, and that hasn't changed regardless of what happens to the Saks lease. A special-occasion dinner now has a genuine new option a short walk north instead of a rideshare somewhere else on the Strip, and that's a real shift in how far you need to travel for a night that matters.
The one worth actually doing this month
If you haven't been across the street lately, Blue Bottle and Hat Club are both worth the five minutes, especially if UnCommons is the only other Blue Bottle you've tried. If you're planning something bigger, get the Sartiano's reservation on the calendar early. A restaurant built around a chef with three James Beard Awards and a view of both a golf course and the Sphere doesn't stay easy to book for long.
Fashion Show Drive is still one of the most walkable blocks on the Strip, and that hasn't changed. What's changed is which direction you walk depends on what you actually need that day.
If you're already living this stretch of the Strip and want to talk about what any of this means for your building, your unit, or your next move in the high-rise market, Karyn Carlton is always glad to schedule a consultation over coffee, ideally the Blue Bottle kind.
